Friday, August 17, 2018

Class

Class is an elusive concept these days. There are Business and Economy Class on most planes and some still have an even higher category designated as First. Business Class passengers travel in comfort with seats that go back 180 degrees so they can sleep while those in economy have to suffer. But the First Class passenger is traveling in even greater splendor that's not validated in a Calvinist way by his participating in any kind of redeeming activity. The First Class passenger has a lot of money because of their class. Whether they work or not is irrelevant. They’re able to afford even greater luxuries due to their economic status. While the Business Class passenger, a member of the managerial or ownership class, might be concerned with getting a bang for his her buck i.e. value, the First Class passenger, because of their position on the food chain, is no longer required to take a business-like approach particularly when their travel is related totally to pleasure. An aristocrat by birth, Alexis de Tocqueville dealt with the question of class in Democracy in America. According to de Tocqueville, one generation of Americans might be upper class and the next might find themselves in poverty.Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Societyis the title of a book by Ralf Dahredorf, a sociologist who was also member of the German Parliament.In societies like France and England, where there's a hereditary aristocracy, class is less a matter of money than lineage, though in our modern day and age there are some companies which apparently traffic in titles, which can be bought. Virgin Atlantic refers to their Business Class as Upper which may be a way of tipping their hat toward the idea of royalty. Also a highborn Englishman can be a member of the impoverished aristocracy as was the case with Churchill. Classy is a word that's often used to describe people as well as things and it implies something conveying a certain element of superiority. When you describe someone as “a class act,” you’re referring to a certain ineffable quality that devolves from their carriage, savoir faire and perhaps education. Speaking of which, when someone asks what class you're in, it still likely to refer to a course you're taking.

About Me

Francis Levy's debut novel, Erotomania: A Romance, was released in August 2008 by Two Dollar Radio.
His short stories, criticism, humor, and poetry have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Republic, The Village Voice, The East Hampton Star, The Quarterly, Penthouse, Architectural Digest, TV Guide, The Journal of Irreproducible Results, and other publications. One of his Voice humor pieces was anthologized in The Big Book of New American Humor (HarperCollins). He is presently the Co-Director of The Philoctetes Center for the Multidisciplinary Study of Imagination (philoctetes.org), where he supervises roundtable discussions on topics as varied as “The Psychology of the Modern Nation State” and “Modern Traffic Theory, Behavior, and Imagination”.